On Extended Wings Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems

9780674634367

ISBN:

0674634365

Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary: Though Wallace Stevensrs" shorter poems are perhaps his best known, his longer poems, Helen Hennessy Vendler suggests in this book, deserve equal fame and equal consideration. Stevensrs" central theme-the worth of the imagination-remained with him all his life, and Mrs. Vendler therefore proposes that his development as a poet can best be seen, not in description-which must be repetitive-of the abstract bases of his ...work, but rather in a view of his changing styles.The author presents here a chronological account of fourteen longer poems that span a thirty-year period, showing, through Stevensrs" experiments in genre, diction, syntax, voice, imagery, and meter, the inventive variety of Stevensrs" work in long forms, and providing at the same time a coherent reading of these difficult poems. She concludes, "Stevens was engaged in constant experimentation all his life in an attempt to find the appropriate vehicle for his expansive consciousness; he found it in his later long poems, which surpass in value the rest of his work."

Vendler, Helen H. is the author of On Extended Wings Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems, published under ISBN 9780674634367 and 0674634365. One hundred sixty six On Extended Wings Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems textbooks are available for sale on ValoreBooks.com, fifty one used from the cheapest price of $9.25, or buy new starting at $27.17.[read more]